NINE MILES NORTH: Chase Road, Southgate N14 (near the junction with Chelmsford Road)
If only a mile were slightly shorter I'd be reporting from Charles Holden's magnificent Southgatestation, but instead we've overshot and started to climb the hill beyond. This was once the southern edge of the royal hunting forest of Enfield Chase, hence the name South Gate, and it's also why the road we're on is called Chase Road. One side has a short burst of Victorian terrace, but the majority of housing hereabouts consists of large Thirties semis built after the arrival of the Piccadilly line. The gradient from the pavement up to the front door provides householders with a landscape challenge which some address with a ramp, others with steps and a few with terraced shrubbery. Workmen are busy paving over one front garden... smoothing the soil, lugging a hod, splitting bricks and tessellating furiously.
Those waiting patiently on the oversized traffic island can pass the time gazing down towards the minor towers of Southgate. An ambulance has turned up to collect a patient, her fold-up wheelchair abandoned by the side of the kerb. Someone's cat pads through a hedge, then pauses to inspect some spiral topiary. A chain of red buckets emerges from a loft extension and opens its mouth above a skip in the street. A handful of roses and sunflowers are holding out into autumn. Everyone's bin has had a tag attached explaining how the council is ending free garden waste collections at the end of the month (pay your £65 now to get 17 months for the price of 12). A handyman pushes a reappropriated supermarket trolley up the hill, his stepladder balanced on top, his brushes wrapped in plastic bags within. The bus from Eight Miles North to Ten Miles North occasionally overtakes.
NINE MILES EAST: Gallions Reach, River Thames (between Royal Albert Wharf and Thamesmead)
This is the thirdtime a Miles East waypoint has landed in the middle of the Thames. This time it feels properly estuarine, the landscape flat, the banks only partially developed. One bank is on the underconnected edge of Newham, at the mouth of the Royal Docks, and the other's in that corner of Thamesmead nobody's ever got round to doing anything with. One day a Gallions Reach bridge may span the Thames here, and I'd have a way to reach the midpoint, but for now all that crosses the water are low-flying planes seconds out from City Airport. Because I'm a glutton for punishment I visited both sides of the river, and wasted a lot of time travelling inbetween.
To see the Nine Mile point from the western side, take the DLR to Gallions Reach and keep walking past the newly-erupted flats towards the river. If you've ever followed the lastsection of the Capital Ring you will have done this, and perhaps wondered what godforsaken wasteland you were entering. A few benches overlook the flood barrier by the former gas works, while the riverside follows an increasingly overgrown path behind a towering radar mast. Intermittent laddered steps lead up and over the concrete wall. It is not a spot to linger. But behind the grey railings a sequenced transformation is taking place as a wall of flats erupts to form phase 2 of so-called Royal Albert Wharf. One block is externally complete, its neighbour is getting its balconies added, its neighbour is getting its windows fitted and its neighbour is still a scaffolded brick shell. Once residents are fully on board this riverfront zone will be opened up with textbook boardwalks, mini-playgrounds and prim rows of trees - you know the score - but for now an edge of character remains.
Over on the eastern bank any intention of building flats is many many years away. The last vestiges of West Thamesmead splutter out after a cul-de-sac named Defence Close, beyond which the developers have bequeathed a strip of park hardly anyone uses, beyond which the Thames Path continues alone. Inland are high fences shielding a vast brownfield site despoiled in the days when the Plumstead Marshes were for explosive use. The riverbank by contrast is wooded and occasionally open, should you fancy picking your way through long grass and thick brambles. At one point Greenwich council have provided the most vandalproof bench they could think of, a solid concrete slab, and here the foreshore has been littered with dozens of discarded bottles and cans. Just offshore is the very spot where in 1878 the paddle steamer SS Princess Alice collided with a coal ship and sank, flinging over 600 passengers into sewage-churned waters. It remains Britain's deadliest inshore shipwreck, an unimaginable end to a jolly day out, commemorated by a now-illegible information panel beside the navigation light at Tripcock Ness. Should you choose to proceed further, the next escape point is almost one mile distant.
NINE MILES SOUTH: Beddington Industrial Area, CR0 (junction of Marlowe Way and Beddington Farm Road)
This isn't pleasant either. We're on the site of Beddington Sewage Works, since relocated to the other side of Beddington Lane to leave space for a huge wodge of industrial estate. The closest landmark is Croydon's IKEA, but that and the remainder of the Valley Park Retail and Leisure Complex is deliberately segregated from the Beddington Industrial Area resource management hub, which is very much Sutton's grubbiest quarter. I trekked in dodging trucks and vans, and a one-off pony and trap, heading for the line of pylons crossing Marlowe Way. At the end of the road is the backside of a very big Asda, and across the road a major distribution centre for another supermarket, namely Sainsbury's. Most of it is lorry park, and several of the dozen bays have Eddie Stobart containers poking out.
The Nine Mile point is occupied by the Beddington Conference Centre, reputedly "the ideal place for organising business meetings, conferences or a complete solution for events and receptions ideal for corporate clients". I hope the interior's something special because from the outside my first thought was provincial motel. A rim of barbed wire and a security guard with a barrier combine to ensure nobody gets to wander in off-spec. Also within this perimeter is the HQ of Fruitful Office, a company who deliver baskets of fruit to offices because that's a thing now. Their chief selling point is that they split the bunches of bananas and grapes in advance to stop employees taking too many, but they must be doing well because I counted 20 delivery vans outside. If your company needs a regular wellbeing perk, never ever tell your staff that their plums arrive via a former sewage works.
NINE MILES WEST: Maunder Road, Hanwell, W7 (off Boston Road)
Hanwell's a lot older than it looks, and used to be important until Ealing overwhelmed it. At its heart is the Uxbridge Road, and off that a triangular one-way system, and off that the brief dogleg of Maunder Road. It's been here since Victorian times when it ran down to some fields, whereas now it merely dodges the back of Lidl. One of its corner shops is occupied by a beauty bar, which is smart by local standards, although looking around that isn't hard because the gentrification whirlwind has yet to hit. The other corner shop belongs to some solicitors, while across the road is a shuttered unit called LookingForBargain.com, a website which probably never existed (and probably never should).
Maunder Road is "Unsuitable For H.G.V.S." according to its street sign, partly because parked cars make it too narrow but mainly because of the sharp bend at the end. Twenty terraced houses have been squeezed in along its length, each with barely any garden front or back but still boasting a half-million price tag. Only proper hanging baskets grace their frontage, there'll be none of those cheap topiary globes here. Most of the houses have a single attic skylight in the centre of the roof, but number 7 has had the builders in to give their extra bedroom some decent width. Only one resident has a Garage In Constant Use, and only one a Driveway In Constant use, neither of which I saw being used. It's all delightfully ordinary, and ever so convenient for Crossrail.
